In the middle of the 19^th century, images of the national past began to play a new and unprecedentedly important role in the Russian visual culture. However, they are still under-researched or fragmentary studied. The author of this article analyzes and compares the ways scholars approach the visual historicism of that time and determines those forms of the representation of Russian history that have not attracted close attention of scholars before. The author demonstrates that among such forms there was a new type of history painting (“genre historique” / “historical genre”) which was created in French art in the first third of the 19^th century and emerged in Russia in the 1860s. In this author's opinion the historical genre should be further examined in relation to its two aspects. One of them concerns the representation of history, that is, the problems of historicism; the other is related to the modernization of painting, that is, artistic problems as such. Hence, two difficult questions arise. 1. What modes of perception and representation of the national past (those that cannot be achieved in graphics, sculpture, architecture, literature, and historiography) did the “historical genre” open up in painting? 2. Which artistic innovations did the “historical genre” demonstrate, outpacing other genres in Russian painting of the period?.